Ideas and Questions
Do you have questions, brilliant suggestions, or interesting topic ideas for a show? Maybe you just want to give us a shout out? Perhaps you just like to hear yourself talk? Well, regardless, we would love to hear from you. You can contact us by:
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We look forward to hearing from you soon!
- theGeeks
Hey Geekmeisters,
I’d love to hear about first experiences with Alloy – especially since Colgate Palmolive is one of the first companies to implement it.
Keep up the good work,
Michael
I think I speak for all the eGheads when I ask that all important question; Where are our eGeek screensavers and desktop themes?
The new logo is there now so the Schwag will be coming along soon, watch for it
Possible topic of discussion could be the dilemma of “Best in Breed vs. Integrated Systems”, especially for a corporate entity which primarily runs SAP
Can you guys do a BSP vs webdynpro thing? ignore this if you have already done that
@Vijay check out the podcast episode on UI evolution. If you still have more discussion ideas, let me know and we will be happy to discuss it on a show: http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/2009/02/14/egeeks-podcast-episode-6/
Thanks Ed – I will listen to it on my way back to hotel tonight.
Essentially, my point is that even today, CRM development happens on BSP..well a weird mix of CRM and Webdynpro actually. Plus some part of CRM like web channel uses java. I am talking about 7.0 – brand new system – so why would SAP do this?
I manage a team that does work on ECC and CRM and other things, and it is hard to get people spun up to a master level on all of these.
Not sure if you are familiar with CRM’s web service tool – it can create services from an abstract object layer. I imagine this happened instead of ESA since SAP was busy with I work in CRM. Now that is another thing that gives me some grief – I need a strategy on whether to use these custom services that I can generate, or wait for ES to come in an EhP later. Grief I could have lived without if all parts of SAP did the same thing for UIs and services
in SAP’s favor – the new CRM UI is the coolest one I have seen so far – it rocks and my users love it.
Ed belated Congratulations for Runners-up of SAP Polestar competition. Can we hear about this – the practical aspects and use cases.
BR,
Somnath
I enjoy your energy and enthusiasm. I’m interested in your take on solving challenges around latency from source to BW Infocubes. Users seem to be asking for more frequent data refreshes and the processing in between institutes delays. Does the recent Terradata announcement help here? Can we put all this data in one location and leverage BW & BObj?
SJ
Hey guys,
I really like your podcasts and all the effort you are putting to help out the SAP community. I have a suggestion for a video podcast similar to the ABAP freak show but something that is geared towards beginners. For example, you could show new coding techniques, ABAP Objects, internal table techniques, how would you go about solving specific problems, best way of fetching data from multiple tables or sources, etc. I would love to see something similar for Business Workflows. I think this will help a lot of beginners in this field.
Thanks again for your great podcasts.
Ali
First I wanted to add my two cents about Vijay’s comments regarding CRM and Web Services. Having travelled up to SAP Labs Montreal and working with the CRM TPM Team, they are told to review all of the available technologies within SAP before making a decision on what to use for their specific products(like TPM). There didn’t seem to be a specific SAP mandate that all groups need to conform and use the same technologies, which makes life extremely difficult for us customers(complete agreement with Vijay on this point). It would be nice if the SAP Product Managers had more power to enforce standards.
For Steve’s comment about Terradata and BOBJ, this is a very recent announcement(and still not clear). We have a meeting with them on Monday to get some clarity but from what I’ve heard it’s just a partnership with Terradata. Not the same like BOBJ merger, so you’ll still have to buy the terradata tools. There’s lots of third party vendors who pull in BW/BI data into an in-memory database for full flexible reporting. I just looked at the QlikView product and it’s got a really slick UI and feature set. Also don’t forget SAP’s P* (code name) or Business Objects Explorer(proper name) since you throw your BI data into BWA and then use Polestar to report on it.
This still requires loading and wait time as Steve points out, the concept of a hybridprovider was discussed by SAP for the past couple of years. This would allow BI Reports to be based on historically loaded data(cube) as well as the merge from an ODS or some other temp repository objects which would allow a close fit to the “real-time” reporting you mention. Heard this is coming in BI 7.2 so still waiting for it.
Here you go: http://www.sportstatz.com/ss/web.asp?mode=17&club=417
Here’s my idea for a new podcast, comparison of “sprint” style development techniques which have been recently adopted by SAP vs. more traditional development “cycle” releases(which take months or years).
FYI: I love listening to the podcasts on my droid…”droidcasts” doesn’t quite sound right.
Questions I think would make a great discussion
Will the iPad impact the enterprise market? What will be its influence on SAP and SAP technology going forward?
The rise of HTML5 and Apple’s insistence on not allowing plugins like Flash and Silverlight to run on the iPhone/iPad seems to signal the beginning of the end to these technologies and there will now be a race to develop the HTML5 tools that will deliver the new web. are SAP building HTML5 developer tools? Should they be?
The evolution of interfaces from Point and Click to the new world of Touch and Swoosh provides challenges to the design standards of today? Will SAP be ready? Do the current UI standards, i.e. Web Dynpro ABAP deliver on these new platforms? Is it time for a WD Cocoa Touch renderer? (joke)
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Here is my take..
The Apple iPad and its coming ‘clones’ (based on Android, W7) will not influence the enterprise market but will transform it. Major enterprise software houses need to be especially careful of not dismissing these devices as toys that will only ever achieve a niche place in the enterprise.
As an example a couple of years ago I did some work at a company that had a large field services division and they did a rather long and expensive study trying to find the best device for their field services staff to use. They new exactly what they wanted and they described it in detail. They looked at every product on the market and not one fitted what they were after so they eventually opted to keep the laptops they were using even though they were a poor fit. The problem was that the device did not exist yet, it does now and its called the iPad.
The challenge for SAP now is NOT to adopt a wait-and-see attitude for this new platform but to embrace it and build the technology and developer tools that can allow its developers to build the solutions of tomorrow. If SAP do not have enough creativity and foresight to see where the ‘new’ enterprise is headed then they will lose the best geeks to the emerging platforms of tomorrow and if that happens they are as good as dead.
Looks like you guys were one step ahead, I obviously missed this podcast: http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/2010/03/01/enterprise-geeks-podcast-battle-royale-part-ii-html5-vs-browser-plug-ins/
To Dave G: Good questions. We did address some of them in the podcast you reference, so hope that helps. Here are some additional thoughts.
>Will the iPad impact the enterprise market? What will be its influence on SAP and SAP technology going forward?
I think it will. If not the iPad directly then the strong possibility that the iPad will resurrect the tablet market in general. I reserve final judgement until I have an iPad in hand and I get to try out some enterprise apps on it, but I imagine how carrying around such a device to/from meetings and as you travel might be very beneficial. I can’t wait to try out Business Objects Explorer iPhone app and the Safari supported version of Web Dynpro ABAP (7.02) on the iPad and see how the touch interface works with the larger screen size on these types of applications.
>are SAP building HTML5 developer tools?
Yes. We are creating a HTML5 version of the Web Dynpro Renderer for instance. Just like in CE 7.11/ABAP 7.01 we replaced the current WD Renderer with the Lightspeed version (introducing AJAX) it will be possible in the near future to run an HTML5 version of the WD Renderer. We have other things in mind as well, but this is probably the most relevant to current developers.
>Do the current UI standards, i.e. Web Dynpro ABAP deliver on these new platforms?
We are already exploring how the current UI standards do or don’t work with these new UI paradigms and are considering what additions/changes might be necessary.
Interested to hear what you guys are expecting (if anything) regarding ByDesign at Sapphire?
DG